The Sense of an Ending

 

        The Sense of an Ending. Dir. Ritesh Batra. Based on the novel by Julian Barnes. Cast: Jim Broadbent, Charlotte Rampling, Harriet Walter, Michelle Dockery, Emily Mortimer, Billy Howle, Joe Alwyn, Freya Mavor, Matthew Goode, Edward Holcroft, James Wilby. UK, 2017.

 

        Vi hace unos años esta película, y me gustó, y sin embargo la había olvidado completamente. Me he acordado de ella al leer la novela de Julian Barnes en la que se basa. Sobre un jubilado divorciado que vuelve a contactar con una novia de hace cuarenta años, a la que dejó plantada o quizá más bien le dejó plantado, y empezó a salir con un amigo de él... Con las muchas iluminaciones y desilusiones que trae la retrospección. Un pasaje característico:

        Her attitude towards me, now that I looked at it, had been consistent — not just in recent months, but over however many years. She had found me wanting, had preferred Adrian, and always considered these judgements correct. This was, I now realised, self-evident in every way, philosophical or other. But, without understanding my own motives, I had wanted to prove to her, even at this late stage, that she had got me wrong. Or rather, that her initial view of me — when we were learning one another's hearts and bodies, when she approved of some of my books and records, when she liked me enough to take me home — had been correct. I thought I could overcome contempt and turn remorse back into guilt, then be forgiven. I had been tempted, somehow, by the notion that we could excise most of our separate existences, could cut and splice the magnetic tape on which our lives are recorded, go back to that form in the path and take the road less travelled, or rather not travelled at all. Instead, I had just left common sense behind. Old fool, I said to myself. And there's no fool like an old fool: that's what my long-dead mother used to mutter when reading stories in the papers about older men falling for younger women, and throwing up their marriages for a simpering smile, hair that came out of a bottle, and a taut pair of tits. Not that she would have put it like that. And I couldn't even offer the excuse of cliché, that I was just doing what other men of my age banally did. No, I was an odder old fool, grafting pathetic hopes of affection on to the least likely recipient in the world. 

Krapp's Last Tape